April 03, 2013

refreshing the blog Friday open thread

by liberal japonicus

The things you find when you check stuff. The idea of this was on what I thought was Thomas Paine's quotation about refreshing the tree of liberty, but was actually Jefferson's, which was "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." It also revealed that there is a second part to the quotation, which is "It is it’s natural manure." Bartleby cites a French antecedent with similar meaning, and then points to Tertullian, who wrote “Plures efficimur quotiens metimur a vobis; semen est sanguis Christianorum (We multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians is seed).” I leave it to each of you to determine what constitutes a factoid in all that.

This all takes on rather interesting resonances when I reveal that the main point of this open thread is to let everyone know that we've asked Ugh, who has kindly agreed, to join us on the frontpage. If you are among the crème de la crème that gathers over at hocb.net to kibitz, you'll know that Ugh has been over there doing a great job of stirring the pot. I'll leave it to him to introduce himself, but consider this a Vorspiel

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

So wrote Jefferson, on the topic of Shays Rebellion, from his truly excellent digs in Paris, where he was personally refreshed by the wine of tyrants.

The wine was accompanied by fine food prepared by James Hemmings, Jefferson's slave and the half-brother of his late wife, and likely served by the teen-aged Sally Hemmings, domestic servant, traveling companion of his daughter Polly, half-sister of his late wife, property of his late wife and thus of Jefferson, and comforter of Jefferson in his lonely late-middle-aged widowhood.

The girl wore a lot of hats.

Sadly, it was difficult for Jefferson to contribute much more than his words to the refreshment of the tree of liberty from such a distance.

I must say I have a very low opinion of Tertullian's character. He was the spiritual ancestor of the modern 'Left Behind' and openly gloated about how in the afterlife they (the Christians, esp. the martyrs) would have a box seat in heaven with full view of hell, so they could find joy in watching the eternal suffering of the pagans and renegades. I don't mind that he was a killjoy, that came with the territory, but this delight about the misery of others I find disgusting.

It's one thing to take the quote as an observation/prediction/commentary. It's quite another to take it as a directive -- and I keep running across people who to take it that way. (I find myself regretting that I am unable to run over them - physically. It might not water the Tree of Liberty, but it would definitely weed the garden.)

Not to mention that the world has changed more in the last two centuries than it had for, well, jeez - it's hard to even say how long before two centuries ago - some number of millennia I'd guess. That, and Jefferson wasn't a god, or even a nearly perfect man, as russell noted well with specific examples of significant personal failings.

It's used, like several others from our Founding Fathers, like an out-of-context biblical quote, which I find equally (un)persuasive.